Narrative Analysis A

English, School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies

College of Arts and Law

Details

Code 13175

Level of study Third/Final year

Credit value 10

Semester 1

Pre-requisite modules You must have completed at least two years of appropriate study in this discipline.

Module description

In the linked modules of narrative Analysis we analyse a variety of narratives, chiefly written ones but also oral and filmed ones, and develop a fuller understanding of their logic, structure, essential features, peripheral qualities and so on. The kinds of topics we explore include: plot and summary; temporal manipulation in narration; narrativity; point of view; the representation of character discourse; evaluation; film narration; characterisation; unreliability; gendered narration; suspense and surprise; narrative development in children and the patterns and conventions of newspaper 'hard news storytelling. We aim to develop answers to some of the following questions:
What is involved in producing a narrative?
Why are narratives so important to us?
What separates narrative, as a kind of discourse or artefact, from all the things which are not narrative?
What are the most prominent and developed techniques and formal devices of literary narratives?
What does film narrative do that literary narrative cannot do, and vice versa?